Telecommunications are increasing rapidly both in amount and variety. Fairly recent technological advances in telecommunications include cellular phones and other mobile phones, and e-mail. It has been estimated that e-mail already outnumbers traditional mail by over 10 to 1, and this ratio is expected to increase. E-mail can be transmitted through hard-wired computers, but also through wire digital assistants (PDAs). Mobile communication devices can also enable “instant messaging” between parties. With people more and more mobile, they communicate more and more using mobile communication devices instead of, e.g., hardwired phones.
With mobile communications increasing, people want more functionality from their mobile communication devices. Despite this, people also want to have mobile communications devices that are smaller because they do not want to carry bulky, heavy devices, and because people are tending to carry more such devices, e.g., pagers, mobile phones, PDAs, and wireless e-mail devices. They also want their devices to be faster, because time is often at a premium, and cheaper. More functionality, however, is often in direct conflict with smaller, lighter, faster, cheaper devices because more, and more complicated, functions require more memory and processing power. This translates into bigger, more expensive, devices.